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Late Night: Jon Stewart rips atheists fighting ground zero cross

August 5, 2011 | 6:57
am

Jon Stewart is hardly a conservative, but once every millennium or so, he happens to agree with the folks over at Fox News. On Thursday's episode of "The Daily Show," Stewart took aim at American Atheists, an organization that is trying to stop the display of a metal cross at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

He fired this opening salvo:"By the way, atheists, why do you [care]?" Stewart argued that the cross, fashioned from rubble from the collapsed Twin Towers, "is an artifact. It has come to mean something to people who view it as a symbol of comfort."

He suggested a few non-litigious options for atheists bothered by the presence of the cross. "Why not just think of it as a metal, T-shaped thing? ... Don't think of it as an ode to Jesus the Christian savior, think of it as an homage to Jesus, the Canaanite with the relatively unsuccessful carpentry business."

Stewart also bristled at a rather indelicate statement made by Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists, who claimed that the cross serves as a reminder to Christians "that their God, who couldn't be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross." Yikes.

Stewart summed up Silverman's mission this way: "I promise to make sure that everyone, even those who were indifferent to our cause, will [really] hate us."